The present invention relates to services offered to users of electronic equipment, especially but not exclusively to users of mobile communications devices such as portable telephones and suitably equipped PDA""s (personal digital assistants). The invention further relates to means for use in the delivery of such services, and to devices for receiving them.
Recent years have seen a great increase in subscribers world-wide to mobile telephone networks and, through advances in technology and the addition of functionalities, cellular telephones have become personal, trusted devices. A result of this is that a mobile information society is developing, with personalised and localised services becoming increasingly more important. Such xe2x80x9cContext-Awarexe2x80x9d (CA) mobile telephones are used with low power, short range base stations in places like shopping malls to provide location-specific information. This information might include local maps, information on nearby shops and restaurants and so on. The user""s CA terminal may be equipped to filter the information received according to pre-stored user preferences and the user is only alerted if an item of data of particular interest has been received.
An example of a CA terminal is given in U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,861 which discloses the use of wireless telephones within the context of advertisement billboards. The user of a wireless telephone obtains the telephone number of a vendor by activating his/her wireless telephone to transmit a prompt signal to an active advertisement source and to receive from the advertisement source a response signal containing the telephone number of the advertising vendor. The telephone number can then be used to automatically place a call to that vendor via the public switched telephone network. Alternatively, the telephone number can be stored for use later on. This arrangement can be used to place a call to a vendor without having to either memorise the telephone number or to write it down. The signals between the billboard and the caller can be transmitted as modulated infrared (IR) signals.
Many services and applications proposed for CA systems benefit from a genuine broadcast mode that does not require the mobile terminal to join a wireless network. The Media Lab of MIT have devised xe2x80x98meme badgesxe2x80x99 or xe2x80x98Thinking Tagsxe2x80x99 which allow wearers to exchange simple text messages or quotations when they are within i.r. range and in line-of-sight. Other similar concepts such as xe2x80x98hot badgesxe2x80x99 have been published, for example by Philips Design in their 1996 xe2x80x98Vision of the Futurexe2x80x99 (http://www.design.philips.com/vof/), where personal devices broadcast profile information about their users to the local area, to be picked up by other nearby participants for correlating personal matches. In addition, a short-range r.f. device (xe2x80x9cthe Lovegetyxe2x80x9d) became a craze for xe2x80x98blind datexe2x80x99 facilitation between teenagers in Japan in 1998. Users of the Lovegety could set one of three pre-assigned signals and be audibly and visually alerted when another Lovegety owner was in range, the alert being different when the encountering users have both selected the same settings (which might correspond for instance to looking for a date).
The authors of these devices and concepts have articulated a range of personal and social applications that can be facilitated by such electronic augmentations of users"" projections of personalities, interests, moods, skills or resources. The Lovegety craze indicates the potential mass popularity of such a short-range r.f. device for teenagers. In a professional setting, such as a large commercial show, such xe2x80x98ice-breakerxe2x80x99 devices can bring together people with complementary business interests or be used as a form of electronic business card exchange.
Custom devices such as those above are limited in their market penetration, while mobile telephones are rapidly becoming ubiquitous. With Bluetooth communications protocols predicted to become a common technology in mobile communications devices, one possible solution to the problems of establishing a broadcast mode for CA applications might be via the full current Bluetooth handshaking process to set up a two-way Bluetooth connection for data exchange between mobiles carried by consenting users selecting such a service. As explained in our co-pending United Kingdom patent application no. 0015454.2 (from which the present application claims priority, and the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference), in the context of mobile user encounters with fixed beacons, the current Bluetooth connection protocol carries the disadvantages of:
Time to establish the connection before any data can be exchanged (10-30 seconds, by which time the encountering parties may be out of r.f. range);
Power consumption for hand shaking transmissions on behalf of the listening device to establish network connection;
Limits of number of active listening devices that can be addressed by the broadcasting device (7 active in a piconet);
Loss of privacy by the listening device as its device id. becomes known by the broadcasting device in the process of establishing the connection. In many opportunistic situations, the listener to a broadcast wishes their identity and location to remain anonymous and private. This is a major drawback.
Another possible solution for these CA applications might be via a central service that registers those mobile users in proximity to a fixed infrastructure and for example compares web-stored user profiles, alerting users via Bluetooth or the cellular network of matches. However this again suffers from some of the disadvantages above (especially privacy) and, in addition, restricts the encounters to pre-determined places where a user-locating r.f. beacon is installed, rather than ad-hoc encounters.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a means whereby users of portable communications devices can broadcast information to one another without requiring dedicated hardware or a fixed infrastructure.
In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a communications system comprising at least one first portable device capable of wireless message transmission and at least one second portable device capable of receiving such a message transmission, wherein the at least one first portable device is arranged to broadcast a series of inquiry messages each in the form of a plurality of predetermined data fields arranged according to a first communications protocol, wherein the at least one first portable device is further arranged to add to each inquiry message prior to transmission an additional data field, and wherein the at least one second portable device is arranged to receive the transmitted inquiry messages and read data from said additional data field. By the addition of a broadcast messaging scheme to the inquiry phase, messages may be transmitted from one user to another (or to many) without requiring either the sending or receiving user device to join a piconet.
In such a system, the at least one first portable device may be arranged to add said additional data field at the end of a respective inquiry message and/or the at least one first portable device may be arranged to include an indication in one of said predetermined data fields, said indication denoting the presence of said additional data field.
Suitably, although not essentially, the above-referenced first communications protocol comprises Bluetooth messaging, with the at least one first portable device optionally being configured to broadcast a series of inquiry messages on a predetermined clocked succession of frequencies, with clock information for said first portable device being included in data carried by said additional data field. As will be described hereinafter, the said additional data field may be of any given size, from a few bits to at least 64 bits of data and optionally more.
To enable a portable device to filter out unwanted messages in a system as above, the at least one first portable device may be arranged to include in a message first comparison data, and the at least one second portable device may further comprise storage means holding second comparison data and comparator means arranged to identify when there is a match between the first and second comparison data and present the data read from the additional data field, otherwise to not present the data. The system may further comprise means for generating such second comparison data from user profiling of the user of said second portable device.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a mobile communication device for use as the said first portable device in a system as recited hereinabove, the device comprising communications components capable of wireless message transmission and arranged to broadcast a series of inquiry messages each in the form of a plurality of predetermined data fields arranged according to a first communications protocol, and to add to each inquiry message prior to transmission said additional data field.
Still further in accordance with the present invention, there is provided a mobile communication device for use as the said second portable device in a system as recited hereinabove, the device comprising a receiver capable of receiving a short-range wireless inquiry message including a plurality of data fields according to a first communications protocol, means for determining when an additional data field has been added to said plurality of data fields, and means for reading data from such an additional data field and presenting the same to a user.
Preferably, although not essentially, a portable communications device embodying the present invention is configured to receive and/or send messages according to Bluetooth protocols, having the technical features of both the above-recited first and second portable devices. Such a portable communications device may further comprise user-operable means for selecting operation as said first or said second portable device and/or control means operable to switch between operation as said first or said second portable device may be provided. In order to avoid synchronisation problems, as described hereinafter, such control means are suitably operable to switch between operation as said first or said second portable device at pseudo-random intervals.
Yet further in accordance with the present invention there is provided a method for enabling the user of a first portable communications device to broadcast messages to the users of other portable communications devices, wherein said first portable communications device broadcasts a series of inquiry messages each in the form of a plurality of predetermined data fields arranged according to a first communications protocol, and wherein said first portable communications device adds to each inquiry message prior to transmission an additional data field carrying broadcast message data, such that suitably configured other portable devices may receive the transmitted inquiry messages and read the broadcast data from said additional data field.
In such a method, the first portable communications device may suitably add said additional data field at the end of a respective inquiry message and/or the first portable communications device may include an indication in one of said predetermined data fields, said indication denoting the presence of said additional data field.
According to an alternate embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a communications system comprising at least one portable device capable of wireless message transmission and at least one fixed receiver device capable of receiving such a message transmission, wherein the at least one portable device is arranged to broadcast a series of inquiry messages each in the form of a plurality of predetermined data fields arranged according to a first communications protocol, wherein the at least one portable device is further arranged to add to each inquiry message prior to transmission an additional data field, and wherein the at least one fixed receiver device is arranged to receive the transmitted inquiry messages and read data from said additional data field. Thus it will be seen and understood that it is not mandatory for conformance with the present invention that the message recipient be a portable device.